This invention relates to an optical waveguide array provided with a plurality of optical waveguides for transferring image information and to a method of manufacturing the optical waveguide array.
A conventional optical recorder such as an optical printer is operated in the following manner.
Laser beams are emitted from a semiconductor laser generator into a collimator by which the laser beams are shaped as parallel beams. The parallel beams are then deflected at an equiangular speed by a polygon mirror. The laser beams deflected by the polygon mirror are emitted to a plane reflecting plate through an f-.theta. lens and, thereafter, the laser beams are focussed on a photosensitive drum rotated at a constant speed and scanned thereon along a line parallel to the rotation axis of the photosensitive drum.
However, in such a conventional optical recorder, the laser beams are deflected at an equiangular speed by the polygon mirror and, on the contrary, the beams scan on the photosensitive drum at a constant speed. For this reason, in the described conventional technique, it is obliged to utilize an optical lens system such as an f-.theta. lens, which is expensive, for converting the equiangular motion of the laser beams to the constant speed motion for the scanning operation.
In order to obviate this defect, a prior art further provides an optical printer utilizing an optical fiber means such as disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 60-194417. In such an optical printer, the incident light from one end of a cylindrical optical fiber means is subjected to circle-to-line conversion and the converted light is emitted from the linear other end of the optical fiber means and a latent image is formed on the photosensitive drum.
However, in order to manufacture such optical fiber means, it is necessary to bundle a numerous number of optical fibers (for example, 2500 numbers in a case where an A-4 size paper is printed) with high accuracy, thus being troublesome.